Dow Jones & Co., owned by News Corp. (NWS), has started seeking potential buyers for its stock market index business, including the renowned benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Goldman Sachs has been appointed to explore strategic options for the business. News Corp. bought Dow Jones & Co. in 2007 for $5.7 billion, and has never released any financials for the unit since its acquisition. As an independent company, Dow Jones last reported results for the first nine months of 2007, when its revenue increased 18% year over year to $101.3 million.

Market analysts believe that competitors, like McGraw-Hill’s (MHP) Standard & Poor’s, FTSE, a joint venture between the Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange, MSCI Barra, Russell Indexes, NYSE Euronext (NYX), Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters (TRIN), will be interested in Dow’s index business.

The company’s stock market index business consists of 130,000 equity indices

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